Denise Elphick’s fitness journey: Week six

I realise that now I’ve returned from my holiday I need to snap back into sensible eating and exercise.

I immediately restock the cupboard with lovely stuff from Whole Foods: my favourite Primrose’s kitchen raw carrot and cinnamon muesli, almond nut butter, almond milk, buckwheat, dates, walnuts and the fridge full of kale, spinach, carrots, natural live yoghurt and the best quality eggs and butter.

Exercise-wise I am loving Duncan’s very early but terrific 7am target spinning class which I go to before work. I also slot in sessions of yoga, pilates, as well as my two personal training sessions with Danny.

Breakfast at Grace Belgravia

I also have two more colon hydrotherapy sessions with the lovely Katalin, which is a bit odd, but makes you feel very light. It definitely helps with the weight loss – my stomach feels much flatter.

The most exciting thing is that all my clothes are feeling too loose. My newly washed jeans are ridiculously loose and realise I need to get a smaller size.

Everything feels particularly loose around my shoulder area and the top of my arms look so much slimmer. My friends are beginning to say how well I look and I genuinely feel it.

My friend Belinda comes over and we have a cook-in day making Jade’s quinoa bread, cauliflower pizzas with different toppings, as well as batches of chicken with chickpeas and veg for the freezer.

With the remaining cauliflower we make a soup blitzed with stock and a tiny piece of cheddar cheese in the nutribullet which turns out to be delicious – all glossy and healthy.

Finally, I prepare myself for the big weigh-in with Danny. I’m thrilled to find that I have lost 13 pounds in weight as well as three inches from my hips and four inches from my waist – no wonder I need some new clothes! My BMI is right down and so is my blood pressure.

Danny says there is a huge difference in my mobility, strength and stability. I know what he means – I notice how much more easily I get in and out of the car and how much easier it is to bend down to feed the dogs and how much easier it is to lift things. In this session with Danny I lift a ten kilo ball, when at the start I could only manage five.

I’m very happy and determined to keep the good work up. But first stop, some new jeans. My daughter has bumped into Donna Ida at an event and she very sweetly invites me to her store in Draycott Avenue for a new pair.

I’ve decided to take up a mother and daughter membership with my daughter Camilla. I still need to lose a few more lbs to reach my final goal (which I have now set for Christmas) but I’m determined to keep up the good work whilst still having fun!

Find out why Grace Belgravia have been awarded the Butterfly Mark here.

Denise Elphick

Denise Elphick is a lifestyle journalist whose work has appeared in the Sunday Times Style magazine, the Telegraph, the Times, the London Evening Standard, Grazia,
Homes & Gardens, Living Etc and Easy Living as well as the New York Times and Boston Globe. She is the co-writer of a travel book, Weekend Breaks, published by Simon & Schuster, and was a co-founder of the restaurant booking site Toptable.